Winter Approaches

We are enjoying the last golden days of fall before the weather falls off a cliff. Yesterday was sunny and 72F and I drove to Missoula to teach a (very enjoyable) serger mastery class. On the way home, I stopped at the Amish store for a cup of peanut butter chip ice cream, which I ate outside while basking in the late afternoon sun.

By Sunday, highs are supposed to be in the low 40s. It is time to button up the garden and greenhouse. The squash will have to go somewhere. There are flies in my laundry room and I have thought, more than once, of hunting down a barn spider and installing it in my kitchen for the winter. I miss Charlotte.

I’ve put together 3/4 of an On Repeat top. Once again, the lighting is awful.

This linen is lovely despite being wrinkled from handling. You may wonder why I put my sleeves in flat. I have given up trying to set sleeves into finished armscyes. I have been trying for years to do it the traditional way and can’t. I have tried every trick in the book. I set sleeves in flat when I was knitting and I have decided to continue doing it that way because I get a beautifully smooth sleeve cap with no swearing. I will try to take some photos on the next one so you can see my method. I don’t necessarily recommend it as the best way; it is simply the way that works for me.

I also have some thoughts about seam allowances. I am not sure what is leading the charge against 5/8" seam allowances, but I am not in favor of the narrower seam allowances in most garment patterns these days. A 1/2" seam allowance is okay but not ideal; a 3/8" seam allowance is even less so. I have run across one or two patterns with 1/4" seam allowances, which is just ridiculous. We are making clothing, not quilts. I would rather have the wider allowance and trim off any excess with the serger. I may begin adding a bit extra to the seam allowances when I trace my patterns just because I can.

I have not yet decided how to schedule the rest of my week. I have an appointment in town tomorrow at 11, so it makes the most sense to me to wait and run all my errands while I am there despite the fact that the husband is out of the mixed nuts he likes to snack on in the evenings. (He pointed that out to me.) Also—and you did not hear me say this—I am a bit tired of driving. More to the point, I am tired of dodging idiots on the road. I can’t start salsa production until I get some onions and hot peppers, but the second batch of sauerkraut is ready to be canned. I probably will do that today after I finish the On Repeat top.

I watched a YouTube video last week of a sewist in the UK who decided that she needed to reprioritize her schedule to make sewing something she did first every day instead of last. That resonated with me. So often, sewing is the reward I give myself when I finish all my other tasks. The problem is that I am a shining supernova in the morning, which makes morning the best time for me to do focused work that requires a lot of mental energy, like paperwork and writing. Sewing works best for me in the late morning and after lunch. I want to keep that arrangement through the winter but figure out how to put some guardrails around my sewing time so it doesn’t get pushed down the list by something else.